Shanghai Follows Beijing in Putting Brakes on Traffic

Shanghai will implement a watered-down version of Beijing’s car ban policy in order to relieve road congestion and to reduce air pollution. From Reuters:

Starting next month, vehicles belonging to the government or state-owned enterprises will be banned from the roads on one out of five weekdays in a system based on license plate numbers.

Different from Beijing’s curbs, Shanghai‘s will not apply to private cars even though “Shanghai’s private vehicles are encouraged to follow the restrictions,” Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying.

Beijing has imposed another 6-month car ban starting on October 11th (see CDT article) after its first implementation during the China’s Olympics 2008. However, the post-Olympics environmental report conducted by Greenpeace points out that Beijing should also tackle the rapidly growing car ownership rate.